Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Every year I like to share a Spice Girls Holiday related video with ya. It's become known as America's least looked forward to tradition. Thank you very much! Here's another cute commercial for a British department store chain that plays off the girls persona's:

Monday, December 10, 2012

Every year I try and find some YouTube clips of classic Christmas songs performed on television in the 50's...these clips seem to be few and far between. Perhaps if I was looking for clips of cats falling off kitchen counters I'd be more successful. However, here's a holiday cheer filled clip I found - Mr. Christmas himself Bing Crosby singing his signature tune, White Christmas. Bing Crosby Christmas Specials were a holiday staple for many years, this show is from 1977 and was called Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas. It was to be his last holiday special.

Friday, December 07, 2012

I was pretty happy yesterday to see some honest-to-goodness Disney Classics arrive on the Netflix streaming service. Hopefully this is the start of a beautiful relationship between the two entertainment giants and more titles both popular and obscure will start to surface!

Some major titles making their debut on Netflix:

Dumbo (1941)

Alice In Wonderland (1951)

The Aristocats (1970)

The Fox and the Hound (1981)

The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

The Rescuers Down Under (1991)

Pocahontas (1995)

The Tigger Movie (2000)

And then some other goodies from the studio:

One Magic Christmas (1985)

Pocahontas II: Journey To A New World (1998)

The Brave Little Toaster Goes To Mars (1998)

The Brave Little Toaster To The Rescue (1999)

Air Bud: World Pup (2000)

Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch (2002)

Tarzan & Jane (2002)

Air Bud: Spikes Back (2003)

Air Buddies (2006)

Tinker Bell (2008)

The Crimson Wing: Mystery of the Flamingos (2008)

Mickey Mouse Club House: Road Rally (2010)

Car Toons: Mater's Tall Tales (2010)

Spooky Buddies (2011)

I was surprised to see some of Disney's real animated treasures like Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland available and pleased to find some off-beat titles as well. It looks like this could be the start of something magical...

Sunday, December 02, 2012

Love At The Christmas Table (2012) There seems to be no less than 30 new Christmas movies debuting on television this season, this is one of them. What brought me to this picture was Danica McKeller (Winnie from The Wonder Years) and one of my all-time faves Lea Thompson. I intended to turn the movie off after 5 minutes but I was intrigued by the very first opening frames of the movie. This sappy holiday romcom, which is debuting on Lifetime, was produced by independent film company The Asylum. I've seen some of The Asylum's other work which is all gory horror movies and raunchy sex comedies, so I was surprised to see them producing a movie for Lifetime Television. The Asylum's films are always low budget affairs, with actors who can't act and stories that don't make a whole lot of sense but their scripts always show a flare for creativity and I've enjoyed what I've seen from them, especially the Netflix Classic "Barely Legal". The Christmas flick follows a couple who fall in love over the course of 30 years meeting one night a year at the kids table of their father's company Christmas dinner. Sappy, corny, predictable, confusing, and boring in parts...in the end, it worked for me. It's a cute little Christmas package with some higher than usual production values for The Asylum. It's no "Barely Legal"...or "Abraham Lincoln Vs. Zombies", but it's fun!

Soul Surfer (2011) Second time seeing this feel good surfing movie, it holds up. Good performances from the cast and a script that knows it's treading on familiar cinematic territory - the story of Bethany Hamilton, a young surfer who lost her arm to a shark attack yet learned to surf again, is an awe inspiring journey.